Anthony Giddens, who stepped down as director of
the London School of Economics in December, is the intellectual "guru"
for British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Third Way politics. He is author
of "Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics."

By Anthony Giddens

LONDON -- At first sight it looks a purely French affair.
President Jacques Chirac's government proposes to ban the wearing of the
Islamic headscarf or veil, the hijab, in French schools. Other "conspicuous"
religious symbols are to be outlawed, too, including the Jewish skullcap
and what are termed "large Christian crosses." But the hijab
is the prime focus of debate. Previously it was left up to schools to
decide whether girls could wear the headscarf in the classroom. The result
was a series of rebellions in schools that opted to forbid the practice,
leading to the expulsion of some girls. The government hence felt the
need to rule on the issue.

The decision that was reached was not an arbitrary one.
It followed a report by France's secularism commission, which held public
sessions for a period of months from July to December 2003. The commission,
headed by former government minister Bernard Stasi, heard evidence from
a range of individuals and groups, including from Muslim women who wear
the hijab and from others who do not. The whole thing might look specifically
French because the tradition of secularism is much stronger there than
in most other countries.

That tradition, of course, dates back to 1789 but was
given particular force by a law passed in 1905, enforcing an absolute
separation between the state and religion. How strong this emphasis remains
is indicated by the fact that the French census contains no questions
at all about the religious affiliations of respondents. As a consequence,
the numbers of Muslims in France can only be guessed at. They probably
amount to between 5 to 7 million, giving the country easily the largest
Muslim minority in Europe.

Yet the battle over the hijab is actually in no sense
a peculiarly French
concern -- it is happening in many countries and has a lengthy history.
Some of the Lander in Germany, such as Bavaria and Baden-Wurtenberg, are
proposing to introduce similar legislation to France. Wearing the hijab
is banned in Turkey, as was the case in Iran at the time of the Shah.
In
Suharto's Indonesia, Islamic dress was regarded as a sign of ignorance
and backwardness and actively discouraged in schools until the early 1990s.
In Oklahoma, in the United States, an 11-year-old girl was sent home from
a public school because her headscarf contravened dress codes originally
introduced to prevent the wearing of gang insignia.

Even a cursory glance at the Internet shows dozens of
testimonies from
Islamic women across the world giving their reasons as to why they either
wear the headscarf or refuse to wear it. Most "refusniks" use
feminist
arguments to justify their decision. For them the veil symbolizes the
subjugation of women in Islam. Others, including converts to Islam in
countries ranging from the United States to Japan, use parallel arguments
to justify a contrary stance. In their view, the wearing of the veil liberates
women from the sexual gaze of men. Men treat women more as equals if all
visible signs of sexual attractiveness are removed.

The debate about the hijab is intense, emotional and
truly global. Are we
therefore talking about a clash of civilizations here -- a global fault
line
between Islam and other, more cosmopolitan cultures? I don't think so.
Rather, the connecting thread everywhere is the changing position of women.

Women's identities are on the front line in the new global
environment in
which we live. Femininity -- how a person defines herself as a woman --
is no longer a given but has become something that is fought over. An
insistence upon the purity of women, a strict division of labor between
women and men, and the traditional family is characteristic of
fundamentalist movements not only in Islam but in other religions, too.
For this reason the hijab has no unitary meaning. It reflects the diversity
of women's experience and aspirations around the world.

Certainly in many Islamic cultural contexts it expresses
the continuing
subjugation of women. But it has many other nuances and contradictory
meanings as well. For instance, it can be, and often today is, a fashion
item, while still carrying residues of its religious origins. Thus the
main
online hijab shop offers an array of fabrics and colors that "help
you
change your look and can be used with different outfits."

In some countries -- such as post-Suharto Indonesia --
affluent women have taken to wearing headscarves together with full makeup
and a variety of fashionable and often figure-hugging clothes. In contemporary
Iran, where wearing the hijab is enforced by law, many younger women have
taken to wearing the smallest possible piece of cloth on their heads.
The whole society, like most other traditionalist states, is changing:
for instance, girls now make up more than 60 percent of university students
in the country.

How does all this bear upon Chirac's ban? The answer
is, very directly. The policy is likely to be counterproductive precisely
because the headscarf has so many different meanings, both to those who
wear it and to others around them. Girls whose parents force them to wear
it are likely to be withdrawn from the state sector and sent to single-faith
schools once the ban comes into operation. They may find themselves married
off at an early age to a partner deemed suitable by their parents, and
perhaps with several children by the time they are in their 30s. Such
an outcome can hardly be regarded as desirable by anyone who wants greater
freedom for women. If girls from such backgrounds are to have more of
a chance actively to decide upon their futures, only education in a wider
cultural setting will provide that chance.

To others the hijab is a sign of ethnic identity and
self-assertion in a
society where Islamic communities are a large proportion of the poor and
the excluded. They may reject the idea that the emancipation of women
consists in the wearing of mini-skirts or the baring of midriffs, but
still be
concerned with promoting the further equality of women. And they should
be allowed to pursue such paths.

To seek to ban religious symbols in schools is not the
right policy. A
universal ban has an echo of the very fundamentalism that it wishes to
oppose.